UCSC responds to September 11

For firefighters and police officers, responding to crisis is part of the job description. But for most faculty and staff at UCSC, the events of September 11 presented a unique challenge. With thousands of students scheduled to arrive within the next five days, many scrapped lesson plans, adjusted move-in schedules, and revamped fall orientation activities in anticipation of a very different start to the school year. Those efforts proved to be just the beginning of a fall quarter unlike any other.

Sociologist Dane Archer faced a professional challenge as he sought to incorporate the September 11 tragedy into the first meeting of his class Violence, War, and Peace. Archer knew he had a unique opportunity to reach students, but he struggled with how to do it. Finally, just hours before students were due to gather for the first evening class, inspiration struck.

The result was a three-hour tour de force called "On Higher Ground" that began with Aretha Franklin's rousing rendition of the gospel song by the same name. Archer then presented 15 ways in which the world is a safer and less violent place thanks to the efforts of small numbers of individuals who organized for social change. He cited those who worked to end atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the Third World, as well as nonwar examples such as the end of school paddling - and the criminalization of spousal rape - in a single generation.

"I told the class that none of this would bring the dead in New York back to life, but I emphasized that each of us stood on higher ground because - time and again - small numbers of people had been able to catalyze important changes," said Archer, a professor of sociology who has taught at UCSC since 1972. "The trick was to try to replace terror with hope, and I think we did that that night."

That first class was so successful that Archer warned his students it would be all downhill from there (it wasn't). But what Archer's experience illustrates is one of the many deft and creative ways faculty at UCSC responded to the crisis in the days, weeks, and months after four hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in rural Pennsylvania.

The audacity of the attacks, and the death and destruction they wrought, were overwhelming, and UCSC offered solace for wounded spirits, as well as worried minds. That first week, professor of music Anatole Leikin performed a solo piano concert on campus for a noontime audience. The residential-life staff of the colleges postponed their regular orientation training to prepare for the arrival of distressed students, many of whom would be leaving home for the first time. Crisis counseling and support were made available to the campus community.

And when the students arrived, the campus welcomed them with a candlelight vigil at the Quarry Amphitheater. Mournful notes from a violin reflected the mood as the capacity crowd was invited to the stage to write messages on ribbons that were hung to form a colorful, fluttering backdrop. The Quarry fell silent as Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood led a few moments of reflection, and the gathering ended with song.

Within days, UCSC lecturer in piano Mary Jane Cope pulled together a benefit concert at Holy Cross Church with flutist Leta Miller of UCSC's Music Department and violinist Michelle Witt, manager of UCSC Arts & Lectures.

"There is a power in music that touches us all," said Cope, whose concert raised nearly $1,700 for the American Red Cross disaster-relief fund. "Music offers a sense of commonality. It reaches people on a level that gets them in touch with something deep inside. Now more than ever, the arts are a way for us to dig deep inside ourselves and find what's most human about ourselves."

Numerous university-sponsored teach-ins bridged the "town-gown" gap and fed the public's appetite for information and analysis. Standing-room-only crowds filled large venues to hear UCSC experts discuss the Middle East, U.S. energy policy, South Asia, race and the crisis, and many other topics. More than 500 people packed Classroom Unit 2 on September 28 for a Middle East teach-in during which Alan Richards, a professor of environmental studies with 30 years experience in Middle Eastern affairs, exhorted the crowd to "think outside the box" as he declared the terrorist attacks on the United States "a crisis unlike anything the country has ever faced."

In the week after the attacks, nearly 100 people, including Greenwood, crowded into the College Eight Student Commons Room to hear three top UCSC social scientists discuss the role of the social sciences in the wake of the attacks and subsequent hate crimes. And in October, Angela Davis, a professor of history of consciousness, participated in a panel discussion of race with Muslim community activist Maha ElGenaidi and Professor Manuel Pastor of Latin American and Latino studies at a downtown forum that drew several hundred people.

"The response of the whole UCSC community has been unlike anything I can remember, back even to the Vietnam era," said history professor Edmund "Terry" Burke, chair of the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee on Current Events, which was formed in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "The level of interest has been huge. People really want to learn and to think together about this important turning point in our country's history."

Faculty also reached audiences far beyond the campus by fielding calls from reporters at news organizations around the world, including the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, Minnesota Public Radio, and BBC Radio. Campus experts have weighed in on topics as diverse as Islam, U.S. foreign policy, war propaganda, and Russia's role in the U.S. "war on terrorism."

Closer to home, KZSC, the campus radio station, and KUSP, the local National Public Radio affiliate, benefited from UCSC expertise as faculty took to the airwaves. The public response to shows with faculty, as well as other experts, prompted KUSP to archive the shows on the station's web site (kusp.org) and even helped the station's fundraising drive in October.

"What's lovely about having local experts is that we can find out what's going on behind the news," said Bonnie Primbsch (Crown '92), public affairs producer at KUSP. "We hear little bits on the news and then have a lot of questions."

In individual classrooms like sociologist Dane Archer's, faculty took advantage of countless "teaching opportunities." In community studies, new Assistant Professor Pamela Perry jumped at the opportunity to coordinate a student-led research project compiling youth reactions to the attacks and subsequent events.

In early November, a convergence of crisis-related events prompted the faculty committee to declare "A Week of Reflection on the Crisis." In separate events, faculty and other experts addressed the domestic implications of the crisis, the energy-related undercurrents of the war on terrorism, racial and gender aspects of the war, and the South Asian dimension of the crisis.

"It was a remarkable week," said Burke, who came to UCSC in 1968.

Of course, faculty are not the only ones who have given generously of their time and talent. UCSC firefighters collected nearly $10,000 for families of fallen firefighters in New York. A staff member helped organize a benefit run to raise money for disaster-relief efforts in New York. Alumni in New York City shared their stories of survival on a special web site that was created to bring the UCSC community together. And students mobilized to sponsor educational, cultural, and social events related to the crisis.

"There has been an openness and a willingness to reach out to each other that is quite remarkable," said Burke.

- Jennifer McNulty

Left to right: Paul Lubeck, Ronnie Lipschutz, and Bryana Britts

Tapping the Roots of Islamic Activism

In early March, prominent international scholars of Islam will gather at UCSC for a four-day conference on globalization and Islamic social movements. When planning for the conference began last summer, no one imagined the events that would make Islamic discontent eclipse all others. But UCSC sociologist Paul Lubeck says there was "plenty of forewarning" of Muslim rage against the United States.

"Militant Islamic movements have replaced Third World nationalism and Marxist movements in their opposition to American global power and cultural domination," says Lubeck, a professor of sociology and an expert on Islam. "They are the most important opposition movement to globalization today."

Last June, with a large grant from the Carnegie Corporation, Lubeck and Ronnie Lipschutz, an associate professor of politics, began a study of the ways in which Islamic social movements are mobilizing to challenge economic globalization. Since then, the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States have focused attention on the roots of Islamic anger.

Clearly, extremists like Osama bin Laden represent a "splinter movement" within Islamic culture, yet there is "widespread sympathy for somebody representing Islam on the world stage," says Lubeck. About 20 percent of the world's population are followers of Islam, the fastest-growing religion in the world, and anti-Western sentiment is strong among Muslims, to whom economic liberalization smacks of Americanization.

In their two-year study, "Comparative Muslim States, Movements, Networks and Strategies," Lubeck and Lipschutz are examining how Muslim states are coping with activist groups and their demands for greater self-determination. Despite their disdain for Western ways, Islamic organizers have embraced new global communication networks, and the study's project director, Bryana Britts (Merrill '99), is creating a public database of Muslim sites on the World Wide Web.

The project, however, has become infinitely more complex since last September. "This has become a transnational movement," says Lubeck. "September 11 blew the lid off, but the challenge of addressing the underlying grievances remains."

- Jennifer McNulty

Alumni Losses and the Rush to Preserve History

On the morning of September 11, staff of the UCSC Alumni Association office sent an e-mail message of concern to hundreds of graduates in New York City and Washington, D.C. About 50 responded with notes of gratitude and stories of their experiences. That electronic link offered hope and reassurance at a time when it was most welcome.

Yet it was also via e-mail that the campus learned of two losses. Atsushi Shiratori (Merrill '89) lost his life in the New York City attack. Shiratori worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, the New York firm with offices in the top floors of the World Trade Center.

Catherine Tenorio Miller (Kresge '92) wrote to share the heartbreaking news that she and her husband, David, lost their 21-year-old daughter, Nicole Carol Miller, who was on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. "She was the third of four kids in our blended family, and we all miss her terribly," wrote Miller. "We miss her loving ways, her quick wit that always made one laugh, her patient, caring ways, and her beautiful smile."

To help document the scope of the tragedy, award-winning radio producers Davia Nelson (Stevenson '75) and Nikki Silva (Porter '73) are gathering "audio artifacts" to create a "sonic memorial" that captures life before, during, and after September 11.

They are recovering audio fragments from voice mail systems, telephone answering machines, dictation tapes, and anywhere else they can find them. Members of the public are coming forward with contributions, including a recording of a pianist in the World Trade Center bar who submitted a tape of himself playing, and the final air check by the radio station that broadcast from atop one of the towers.

Nelson and Silva, producers of the National Public Radio series Lost and Found Sound (review.ucsc.edu/winter.01/lost_and_found_sound.html), are collaborating with NPR, WNYC Radio in New York, KQED Radio in San Francisco, and the telecommunications company Verizon to salvage and preserve the recordings.

The final form of the project remains unknown. The material might be used on the radio or incorporated into memorials at the sites of the attacks. But the focus now is on collecting and preserving these audio links to history.

- Jennifer McNulty

The project invites anyone with audio artifacts related to the World Trade Center to call (202) 408-0300, the same National Public Radio voice mail line used by contributors to Lost and Found Sound.

Photo captions: 1 Professor Manuel Pastor 2 Professor Alan Richards and KZSC-FM broadcast adviser Eric Schoeck 3 Attending a community forum 4 Professor John Brown Childs fields a query 5 Professor Angela Davis 6 Professor Edmund "Terry" Burke 7 An opening-weekend vigil in the Quarry Amphitheater 8 Professor Anatole Leikin performs a solo memorial concert 9 Hundreds attend campus-sponsored teach-ins 10 Muslim community activist Maha ElGenaidi

Photo credits: 1-6 and 9-10, Tom Van Dyke; 7 and 8, UCSC Photo Services